I hear about this case and I’m puzzled. This guy had a religious ceremony and is married (via his religion) to 5 women. So?
How in the world can the state/federal government say “You can’t have this religous ceremony with consenting adults”? Keep in mind that if the guy was just living with the 5 women, I don’t belive the state would/could have done anything. How can this be legal until a religous ceremony is done?
Note also, that I hope they nail this guy for his… “relationship” with a 13 year old girl. If they were only going after him for molesting the girl, I’d be applauding. But set the child-rape part aside from the polygamy. They’re two seperate issues.
I’m honestly stumped: Live with 5 women…no prob. Marry (in a religous, not a state ceremony) 5 women…25 years in the pokey.
Because marriage is a special honor that only nice upstanding monogamous heterosexual folk should have, and it has to be kept from everyone else, or Society Will Come Crashing Down.
Why, please someone explain why, do all storied I read involving polygamy involve child molestation? I can guarantee not all who practice polygamy or polyamory molest children.
I don’t understand why the state cares about this. The United Stated added a bunch of anti poly laws when it was battling the Mormons, and Utahs impending Statehood. These laws are still on the books and still used to harm people. I think that it is against the interests of the state to quibble over who is married and who is not. Let the state record it and be done with it. DO you realize that a man with more than on wife if he tries to emmigrate to the US must discard the extras? How inhumane is that?
Yeah, that part stumped me, too. I think they are more interested in the fact that he “married” one or more of these women while they were minors, so there’s the whole statutory rape question. And the fact that he is not able to financially provide for all of them; I think some (or all) of them are receiving welfare or WIC or some such assistance.
In today’s paper, it said all five wives showed up at the hearing and that three of them are pregnant. Quite an interesting situation. IIRC, two of them are sisters, and he was at one time married to their mother (or the mother of one of his current wives, maybe).
'Bout the only downside I see with this is if it catches on big-time there’ll be a relative dearth of the fairer sex. That said, I’m married so this shouldn’t matter to me.
I’ve often been strangely fascinated with setups like this. Is it jealousy? I don’t think so. I can say the wrong thing at the best of times with one wife so heaven alone knows how he manages with five. [sub]The Studmuffin.[/sub]
Certainly can’t see what the hell business it is of government.
I think the age/underissue is separate (but important; more important probably). So if he really did divorce the other four, how are they going to charge him with bigamy? Presumably it’s not an offence to co-habit with just about as many women as you want?
And from what I’ve read the main reason this guy is being tried is his big mouth. He went on talk shows and flaunted his plural marriages. Utah (and many of the surrounding states) have typically ignored polygamous practices until recently when they bid for the Olympics. They are naturally concerned about charges that the state turns a blind eye to the practice. This is the first time a polygamist has been tried for the practice in over 30 years. (I may have the time frame wrong.) However they did try to members of the Kingston family last year for incest and child abuse. (I believe those were the charges.) The leader of the clan had given his 14 or 15 year old daughter to his brother in marriage. She ran away and her father caught her took her to a barn on one of his properties and beat her severly. She left and walked several miles to a quick stop where they called the police and she told her story.
Who cares? I personally could care less as long as the parties involved are consenting adults. But defenders of this practice always love to ignore the fringe groups that use this practice as a means to subvert the rights of women and abuse their female children.
Having a big mouth isn’t a prosecutable offense; otherwise, Rush Limbaugh would have been thrown in jail a long time ago.
You mean that there are some individuals who simultaneously practice both polygamy and other things such as spousal abuse and child abuse. These people are not using polygamy as a means to commit spousal and child abuse, but are merely doing both simultaneously. Claiming that there is a necessary connection is about as illogical as claiming that Hitler ate broccoli and using this as grounds to ban the sale of broccoli.
[sub]I have no idea whether Hitler liked broccoli or not.[/sub]
I wonder why it is that it’s always the men who are polygamous, or at least there seem to be either none or very very few women who are.I’m sure the men say it’s all about love for more than one woman and it is all for real and that kind of stuff.
Hmmmm.
This leads me on to the thought that polygamy might be more about possessions and less about relationships, about the man validating himself.
Children brought up in such an environment have to be wondering about the status of men and wether they are superior.
Then you have to think about resources, this chap seems to have been on welfare for some time, probably because there is no way he could work and earn enough to support his extended family.
In this case the man is not unfortunate, just cynical, soaking up tax dollars and whatever your approval rating of the relationships this does not seem right.
If he could support such a family, or the family support itself then I’d guess it is their business, but on welfare?
Ask a legal question, get a legal answer, Fenris. First off, you can toss that “consenting adults” thing straight into the garbage bin. It may work at the Ayn Rand Fanfest, but the courts pretty much giggle at it.
Next, allow me to direct your attention to the cases. Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878) is the usual starting point:
One thing to mention, which someone alluded to briefly: The more general “multiple-partner” movement in the US is polyamory, which usually does not carry the Mormon’s sexist differentiation - in the modern polyamory culture, both men and women have multiple partners (so far as I’ve ever seen). Green has a point: he’s been targeted for being a loudmouth.
People have brought up the fact that many of Tom Green’s wives were underage when he married them. The statutory rape charge is valid, and will probably stick, but the bigamy charges? You’re right - who cares?
“A random dig at Ayn Rand - ten bonus points for minty green!”
Your dig may be funny, but we have to ask: Why does the court giggle? Is it justified? Will society truly devolve into a slobbering mess of amoralistic filth (as the pulls below insinuate) because we don’t prosecute over long-term group sex? A man with 11 children - the sole provider of those children from what I can tell - may be sent to federal prison for five years. This benefits society - how?
[quote]
**
Next, allow me to direct your attention to the cases. Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878) is the usual starting point:
For the reasons stated above, this argument sounds childish and outdated. (Unlike most things childish and outdated, of course, it happens to be law…)
<laugh> Time to enact the death penalty for polygamy?
Now I most definitely am going to hurl. The religious bias in this one is quite clear.
Minty Green’s parade of legal precedent is interesting. All of the cited cases (a) refer to religious bases to justify the ban and (b) were decided more than a century ago. It is my considered opinion that these decisions are bad law and that the Court refuses to revisit them for reasons having nothing to do with the law, but rather with their own personal prejudices. See also Hardwick v. Bowers, where the Court held that there is no fundamental protection for “homosexual sodomy” based on nothing other than “tradition”.
It is my belief that, were the Court to revisit the issue de novo without prejudice and under modern Constitutional standards, there is no way that it could find that a blanket prohibition on multiple marriage meets the “least restrictive means” test of strict scrutiny. But the existence of Reynolds in the Court’s history of jurisprudence obviates the necessity for the Court to evaluate the claim properly; it can merely fall back onto this venerable and bigoted opinion and by doing so shirk its obligation to uphold the Constitution.
Reynolds and its progeny are wrongly decided and should be overturned. But don’t hold your breath on it happening.
Hey, I didn’t say I agreed with the law, folks. But that is the state of the law regarding the constitutionality of bans on polygamy and bigamy, and the precedents are too firmly established to be overturned anytime soon. Besides, the Court does have a valid point–just because you claim it’s a religious belief does not entitle you to behave in accordance with that belief.
That’s just too easy a target to pass up, Jay. Just off the top of my head: (1) He ain’t supporting them now–remember all those comments about welfare fraud? Assuming he doesn’t get any conjugal visits, there will be no more Green babies on welfare. (2) He won’t be marrying any more 14-year-old girls. (3) He won’t be giving away any more of his 14-year-old daughters to be married by his pedophile buddies. (4) Jerry Springer has one less guest.